The Holding Pattern

This is the sucky bit. The first three chapters of my manuscript are with an agent. I must wait.

Back in the day, agents were used to being approached on an exclusive basis but this is no longer the rule. That said, I have approached this agent on an exclusive basis. They don't know that but I doubt it would give me much of an advantage even if they did. What I need to decide is whether to leave my book with them for six weeks before approaching another agent or whether I should just get to work sending parcels to agents every week or so. Any thoughts?

If I were to take this approach, it would probably make sense to send out three submissions every couple of weeks. Small problem: I can't afford the postage.

Operation Sh*tstorm Returns

The need to get a publishing deal is huge. This is the main factor in my wanting to send out work to as many agents as possible.

The full-time job that Mr W was offered still hasn't started. Meanwhile, he's had to give up part-time work elsewhere because the council fined us for it (the work was all above board. He told them about it in advance.) He earned a little over £30 and they fined us £90 for it which has to come out of our budget every week! Our housing and council tax benefits have also been reduced. The upshot of this is that we now have enough coming in to pay for rent, insurance, lighting and council tax but no money for food, heating or anything else.

'Heating?' I hear you say 'but it's June.' Well, yes it is but the heating - as long-time readers of the blog will know - emanates from an oil-filled tank behind the house. This oil is responsible for heating everything - including the water. No oil: no hot water. If you click on 'Operation Sh*tstorm' you can follow the drama so far on this front.

The oil monitor has only two bars left. The cost of oil has gone up. The cost of a minimum drop of oil will be about the same as a month's rent. Can't be done.

In all likelihood, we won't be able to buy any food this month but my stockpiled rice is doing well and we have many peas. Hubby has made some chicken stock too so we won't starve. Calories are surprisingly easy to come by. Sugar's cheap. It's entirely possible to maintain your weight on not much money and we're both well-cushioned enough to sustain a drought. Starvation's not a worry. The worry is malnutrition. We're almost definitely both suffering vitamin and mineral deficiencies and we can't afford multi-vitamins. There's hardly any iron in our diet for instance.

Right. I'm going to stop talking about that before I get depressed. The point is: the money I spend on postage, paper, ink etc should be going towards food and oil. It comes straight out of our food budget. It's a huge gamble. It feels so arrogant and selfish of me to think that I can somehow work us out of this poverty with my writing. How the heck do I know whether it's any good? It just seems like the only option. How did J K Rowling afford to sit in a coffee shop all day writing? I'm a million miles from being able to spend money on something as frivolous as going out for coffee.

Could be Worse...

Thank goodness we moved house. The last place we lived in was fire damaged, had wood worm and there was a black bucket at the end of the bath which supplied the water. The place was constantly damp and generally falling to bits. The place we moved to had no carpets or curtains but it's gorgeous. It's really hard to believe how poor we are when you walk round this place! It was pretty easy to believe at the start as we couldn't afford carpets and I had to make curtains. Since we couldn't afford proper fabric, the curtains I made were not impressive. Eventually, we resolved our floor and window issues with the help of some astounding bargaining tactics and lots of free carpet fitting thanks to my husband's step-dad. Now it's amazing.

Back to the point. Given our financial constraints and the long cold-bath summer which stretches ahead of us before the onset of another hypothermic winter: should I send chapters to other agents or just wait?

The Holding Pattern

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Only Two Days and a Few Hours!

I'm starting to wish I hadn't made this deadline public. Had to really though didn't I? It helps to know there is a literary mob waiting to beat me up verbally if I don't stick to the plan :)

Am I going to make it? Of course. I'll make the deadline because I always do. Never quite sure how it happens but it does. The question is: will I make it?

A number of publishers have been jolly nice to me of late and that's surely no bad thing but it's not necessarily more than a pleasant thing either. If my work isn't up to standard then no amount of friendly chat will save it from the bin.

Is it? My work, I mean, Is it good enough?


The Hoops

So far I've jumped through the following hoops:

1/ Learnt English

2/ Had car accident, fallen into coma, emerged from coma unable to speak

3/ Learnt English again

4/ Got Degree in English

5/ Did lots of research about publishing and novel writing

6/ Written novel

6/ Written sequel

7/ Set up online presence

8/ Built up following of writers, readers, publishers, agents, editors and other media people and a couple of celebrities

9/ Got feedback on my writing from best selling authors

10/ Edited both books. Re-edited first book.

11/ Got agent.

Ha! Fooled you! Didn't get to point 11 yet. This is the bit I'm scared about. The rest of it was in my control but the next bit is not. It's a big, black hole of potential disappointment.

Over the last year, I've taken to reading a few novels by authors doing very well in the 'contemporary commercial women's fiction' category - which is where I think my two books would fall. Some of their work has been great but on more than one occasion I've stared at a page for many minutes, unable to go on, thinking:

'What? That's not right! How on earth did they manage to get THAT published?'

There is one book in particular that sold incontinently well and I could not get past the first chapter for months because of one horrible sentence. It was just ghastly. I'd love to quote it in all its ghastliness as I'm sure you'd agree but it wouldn't be fair to the author so I won't. The thing is that I know this author would have no problem churning out this substandard level of text for huge sums of money for the rest of their life. Maybe their own sense of pride in their work will cause them to improve but even if that doesn't happen, publishers will be happy to continue publishing them.

That isn't something I'd want. I want to be REALLY good. My dream is to find an agent and publisher that take me on because they believe in my work but they won't let me submit anything sub-standard. Even when it becomes really sale-able I wouldn't want someone 'blowing smoke up my ass' as I think you say in America. I desperately want to find a group of people I can work with to get the best possible work published as commercially as possible. Will it happen though? Have I done enough to help it to happen?

The last few years have been intolerably hard for many reasons and it has been a real work of determination to get these books written. There have been times when we've gone without food or without warmth so that we could afford the electricity for me to get words on a screen or the ink to get words on paper. My husband has put as much into these books as I have. Maybe that's why I'm freaking out a bit at the moment. If I don't get published, I'm not the only person I am letting down.

Part of me thinks that I have done as much as I possibly can to give my work the best chance of success but another part of me wonders if that could ever be the case. Is there something I missed? What else needs to happen before Monday to help my words onto the bookshelves at Waterstones?

Only Two Days and a Few Hours!

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Throw Another Log on the Thermostat: It's Party Time!

'Will the heating last that long?' Maybe it will. A stupendous development has occurred. The price of oil went down a couple of days ago.

The Oil Tank is our Master
The oil tank (for newcomers to the blog, our rented abode is equipped with a big tank of oil for heating and hot water) has some kind of Bluetooth capacity which it uses to scare the what-nots out of us. A little plug-thingy sits in our kitchen and communicates with the tank. There are digital bars on it - like you get on a mobile phone - that show how much oil is left. Every time a bar disappears, we attempt to turn down the heat. This has resulted in a couple of 'phew - that was a close one!' brushes with hypothermia. Fortunately, the local council offices provide free thermometers for the old or impoverished to work out how far away they are from hypothermia. We picked one up. It usefully shows us the likely cause of death for either/both of us if we don't turn the thermostat up.

Hypothermia Roulette Anyone?
'Ideal' is declared to be 21 degrees C (70 F). Well, that's never going to happen, so we ignore that one. 18/65 is our goal temperature. We feel quite smug if we maintain this in the downstairs rooms (there isn't a hope in Hell of maintaining it upstairs. The upstairs temperatures are so depressing that the thermometer is banned from going upstairs. It protests that it has a 'right to roam' but we lay into it declaring that as long as it is under our roof it must abide by our laws etc, etc... it gets ugly.)

The most accessible temperature for the downstairs rooms is 15/60 - 'Discomfort and risk of respiratory illness.' I keep thinking we'll harden up and be fine at this temperature but, irritatingly, it is actually not terribly comfortable. It doesn't help that I have asthma and as soon as I start wheezing, Hubby raises an eyebrow and turns up the thermostat. Lightweight!

Generally, downstairs, we avoid getting below 12/55 - too cold - 'increased risk of heart attack and strokes in vulnerable people,' and so far we have kept the downstairs rooms above 9/50 - 'risk of hypothermia below this temperature.' Upstairs is a tundra. The bathroom hosts karaoke parties for penguins and polar bears on alternate nights (they can never meet or the QI elves would go into meltdown and Stephen Fry would have a dizzy spell.)

Anyhow, I'm babbling, and babble is the enemy of the blog format so I'll get back to the story. The price of oil plummeted so Hubby rushed to the phone. We had called a few days before and the price of a 'minimum drop' had been insanely high. We crossed our fingers. The price had dropped by £25.

'Buy! Buy!' I shouted. Hubby pointed out the money we needed was in my account, so I had to calm down, recite digits etc and, I have to say, the moment lost some of its drama.

Par-tay!
Today, we luxuriate in heat. The thermometer has just edged into 'ideal living room temperature' and we are exchanging 'shall you turn it down or shall I?' looks of guilt. In celebration of the blog's great successes over the last week, I'm giving myself half a day - maybe more - of 'I could almost wear a tee-shirt' bliss.

'Hubby: throw another log on the thermostat - it's party time!'

Throw Another Log on the Thermostat: It's Party Time!

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From Drafted to Crafted

Operation 'Land Ahoy!' Limps into Action
Right, enough of this nonsense. Operation 'Sh*tstorm' (see earlier post) has been optomistically promoted to Operation 'Land Ahoy!' as the government has offered temporary port-in-a-storm assistance with various fundamendal expenses, which is nice. Glorious subsistence-level bread-line abundance stretches out before us but, perpetual chin-up-edness aside, the third week of my husband's redundancy has been a fun-sapping exercise of the worst kind.

Leaping Salmon or Fetid Fish?
It's not something they've made up to sell papers: there really are no jobs out there. Numerous big (some huge) companies nearby have recently breathed their last and the employment market is flooded with the overqualified and supermotivated. I am reminded of salmon: desperately aiming for one small dot of river; crammed together and unable to move; using up all the oxygen in the water as bears and eagles pick them off like wasp-ridden fruit from a plum tree. Wow. Note to self. Stop watching wildlife programmes.

Close to the Edit
Analogies aside, it's tough out there. Hubby's doing his best on phone and Internet; and pounding the pavements with his head held high and his Curriculum Vitae held higher but no luck so far. My plan to launch straight into my editing has gone awry in the face of such gloom and I have been gripped by the need to do my best housewife impression and focus all my energy on keeping hubby's grin firmly in place. For the most part, I have done a passable job but I have now lost the plot and need to return to my writing. He's a grown up. He'll cope.

Today begins the big edit. The process of looking my work square in the face and chiding it for its very existence is upon me. I must mock it mercilessly and hack it to bits until it cries
'No more! For the love of all that's good and green! Why me? Why??'
Should be fun. Wish me luck.

From Drafted to Crafted

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Happy Depression!

Technically, I'm not blogging or writing for a few days - it's supposed to be a break but it's torture. All the books say you should take a couple of weeks off after writing a novel to think different thoughts before going back and reading the thing with your critical editor's eye in focus. I'm not loving it. It occured to me that I could legitimately publish an off-topic post and that would enable me to stay within the non-writing rule a bit.

How to Enjoy the Recession/Depression
A recession is upon us. What fun. A jolly challenge presents itself and we all get the chance to perfect a bit of old fashioned stiff-upper-lipped Britishness (whether British or not.) Dust off the brown tea pot, polish up your knitting needles, get out your baking trays, it's show time! Some of the following will only apply if you're English but the general gist of it should be of assistance regardless.

• Don't be a wimp. If you need to cry about the economy taking a downturn, losing your job etc do it now and get it over with... finished? Good. Get counselling for it once the economy picks up again but for now, get over it; there's more important stuff to do. Remember something that is easy to forget in a capitalist society - you are more than the sum of your belongings - Get some lipstick and, on your bathroom mirror, write the following in 'large friendly letters': DON'T PANIC!
• Edit your friend wardrobe. If you have any friends who only judge people on the basis of what they earn or possess, they need to go. You can pick them up again when the economy picks up - if you want to - but for the time being they will make you spend too much and cause you all manner of hell once they lose their own money and realise their lives are empty. Get out while you can. Friends cost money and in a recession you can only afford the good ones. Work out their 'cost per grin' value and if it fits into your happiness budget they can stay.
• Poverty doesn't kill you. Starvation kills you. Enjoy your food. Rejig your attitude to your jiggly bits. Stop asking 'does my bum look big in this?' Start asking 'does my bum look small in this?' If it does, eat some biscuits. If this recession turns into a depression, some people will starve. Make sure you are not one of them. Carbs are your friends. Throw out the sugar substitutes. Shake that healthy butt. Camels have humps for a reason and so do you. Celebrate your body's ability to store calories for later use. Exercise them off again when the economy picks up. Until then, remember that rice and pasta keep for ages so if there is a supply problem later in the year or the price goes up due to requirements elsewhere on the planet, it won't hurt to have some in a cupboard.

If you are in financial difficulty, contact the following people:

The Council: you may be entitled to housing benefit - most people are. If you have less than £16,000 in savings you could be getting help with rent while times are hard. You've paid your taxes so the money's yours if you need it. Stop being proud and call them. They're nice people. Really. Be kind to them - they have lots of angry people going in and shouting at them. It's not nice. Smile at them and they'll help you. You may also be entitled to help with Council Tax etc. This particularly applies if you've just been made redundant.
-Citizens' Advice Bureau: They'll help you take the right steps for your particular situation, put together budgets etc.
- Payplan: These people are amazing if you have any problems with debt. They are the ones the Citizens' Advice people or National Debtline will put you in contact with if you need help sorting out your finances so go straight to them if this is your particular problem. They can put together an IVA for you or a debt management plan or advise on things like bankruptcy and relevant financial legislation and they are FREE!
- www.moneysavingexpert.com You can download forms if you've been mis-sold insurance or need to claim back bank charges etc. There's advice on what to do if you've been made redundant, been messed about by your bank etc. There's an answer for just about everything on this site.

If you're not in financial trouble, have oodles of cash and don't know what all the fuss is about take the following steps:

• Look at why this is. If you have inherited money or made a killing out of business, the ultimate source of your profits will be the difference between what you or your ancestors paid for people's time and effort and what it was actually worth. If it weren't for the work of the masses you wouldn't have the cash and if these same masses don't get back to work, you won't have anything to spend your cash on. Don't feel bad about being loaded, it doesn't make you a bad person, but don't feel too smug about it as it doesn't make you a good person either. You've been helped out along the way whether you know it or not, so now's the time to do something about it.
• Spend some of it. Look around; think which businesses will affect the local community most if they disappear and spend more cash there.
• Pay taxes. Stop it with the tax-haven malarkey. It's just wrong in the current climate. Pay some tax in your home country. Go on, you know you want to really.
• Give some away. None of this 'ooh, look at me, I'm giving away money' stuff - unless you really need the approval in which case do it. Try giving money away to people who really need it. Who in your county or country needs some money and would do something great with it? Just give it to them. Do this with at least 10% of your worth every month. Wipe out your affluenza at a stroke.
• Buy organic. Lots of people are having to adjust their organic and green principles in favour of annoying things like avoiding starvation and hypothermia. You don't have to do that so splurge on organic, environmentally and ethically sound produce and keep these people in business. Keep partying for the greater good.

Happy Depression!

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A Tale of Two Days

Two Taxing Days
I am surfing a giant stress wave. There are only two more days until my first-draft deadline which would be stressful enough were it not for the nightmare pair of days I am currently contending with.

Loyal followers will know the story to this point. Newcomers should travel through some of the 'journey so far' and come back so you are aware of the gravity of the situation before reading this post. Go on. We'll wait for you....

Hobbits on a Hill
Ready now? Good. Through the magic of squirreling things away and being creative with chickens, we had enough cash to pay for rent and heating for another month. Looking through our paperwork in an effort to be super-organised, I noticed something scary. My car needs an M.O.T. and Road Tax by the end of the month. Just as I realised this, the temperature plummeted and one of the reassuring lines on the oil meter (which heats the house and water) disappeared.

'Never mind,' I thought, 'I can take some of the heating budget and throw it at the M.O.T. then I can make it SORN (put it off the road.)'

It was a matter of seconds before I realised that I know of nowhere actually off the road where I can store the thing so I can't avoid the full whack of tax even if I want to. It was a matter of hours before another reason not to follow the plan arose. My husband's car broke.

Long story short, the battery was dead and had to be jump started but, as we stood knee deep in snow and surveyed our isolated Hobbitonesque village, we knew that we couldn't avoid the stark truth: modern-day Hobbits need cars and modern-day cars need tax.

My car, being still with tax and M.O.T. for a few days, carried us to the Council Offices for the second taxing event of the week.

"Money for Stamps Guv'nor?"
'We are Povs,' we said, 'be we worthy of benefits?' We didn't actually say that, but that was the gist of it. Many bits of paper were shuffled through and a few reassuring noises were made. We'd heard a few of these the day before at the Citizens' Advice Bureau where our organisational skills and ways with chicken carcasses were applauded and we were told that we'd done all that could be done and they could do no more for us.

'When I am homeless,' I thought, 'I will carry my library card and beg for cash with which to print out manuscripts and buy stamps. I will be the mad, novel-writing bag-lady. "Money for stamps; money for stamps!" I will shout.' I went into a bit of a Dickensesque dream until the man asked us to leave his office.

Anyway, back to the Council Office. Well, the good news is that we may be entitled to a few scraps of government assistance, which is nice, and since the library is close to the Council Offices, Hubby and I went in and loaded up on free literature.

The Deadline
The book is nearly finished. So close now. I feel almost optimistic about hitting my deadline. This afternoon, I'm off to get the car M.O.T.ed. Pray for me that it passes. When I get back I will be typing my fingers off. The novel must be finished. The world may be falling down around me but I have a deadline and as the Internet is my witness, I will finish my novel on time!

A Tale of Two Days

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I think This Counts as an Extreme Weather Event!

A Very Specific Kind of Storm
Operation Sh*tstorm is go! Well, the weather was predicted so the foot or so of snow outside is no shocker but my husband being made redundant yesterday is. Fortunately, my 'hope for the best; prepare for the worst' philosophy has caused me to collect rice the way a Dyson collects dust. Great big sacks of it. (Dysons don't have sacks so that may not be the best analogy but the rice comes in sacks so stick with it.) In the event of twice the current snow and half the current income, the rice will see us through.

Hubby and I formulated Operation Sh*tstorm when the economic climate dipped. We anticipated panic if he ever lost his job so we put together a folder of relevant documents (benefit forms, to-do lists etc), labelled it 'Operation Sh*tstorm' and put it on a shelf. When hubby came home without a job yesterday, it was the work of seconds to locate 'Plan B.'

Our food budget for this week is a little over a pound each a day - if they can do it on Big Brother I don't see why we can't. I toyed with the idea of panic. I considered rocking backwards and forwards on the floor for a couple of days but it seems daft so, instead, we set the alarm for 7.00 this morning, hubby rewrote his CV, applied for every benefit we might be entitled to and searched the internet for jobs, while I wrote another chapter. Only another couple to go now!

In the unlikely event that everything takes an even greater turn for the worst and we end up on the streets, I'm keeping very close hold of my library card. They have computers and I have books to write.

I think This Counts as an Extreme Weather Event!

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Gawd Bless Us...Every One

The 'gawd bless us every one' turkey was a huge success. What it lacked in stature it made up for in taste and, thanks to the festive soup and some homebaked cheesy-nibbly-things and straight-from-the-bread-machine bread, nobody went hungry. Frosty the Fan Oven did splendid work after the electrician chap came out and declared that the previous electrician chap had connected it wrong. A couple of minutes of tinkering and Frosty was Toasty once more. Hubby escaped the grips of man-flu just in time for Christmas, the parental units were jolly and we had a festive truffle of a day.

So, with stockings packed away, my thoughts bungee back to writing. There is still no word from the agent but January is only a couple of days away now so I am excited. I promised not to approach anyone new until January so I have only a few days to wait before I can send off the manuscript to the next few on my list.

Can't wait to get back into the old writing routine. January and February are going to be great. I don't expect to emerge from my writing room at all until my first draft is buttoned up. Maybe I'll break in a new candle to celebrate. By the end of the first week, I will have waded through the tricky middle section of the novel and be scampering down the hill towards the finish. Love this bit!

Gawd Bless Us...Every One

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The Pen is Mightier Than the Oven

The moment I declared that I would write 4,000 words yesterday I knew something would happen to knock me back down to earth. Of course I managed fewer than 2,000. I have a delicious excuse, however. It is nearly Christmas and, for the first time, the clan is descending upon us and our new abode. The turkey has been ordered. It will cost the entire week's food budget. Times are hard and much rides on the perfectly roastedness of our 'Gawd bless us - every one' festive bird. This is the point at which our oven breaks.

Frosty the Fan-Oven
We bought the cheapest oven. We had to. We'd just moved to the first place we'd rented that didn't have an oven... or carpet... or curtains. It was an expensive time and we are povs - a temporary state I hope but a state none-the-less - and as such, we couldn't afford an all-singing, all-roasting oven but we thought, or at least we suspected, that even with a humble price tag an oven would still be able to cook. We were naive. I see that now. A cheap oven will warm your food for a while, then go on strike. In two months, it has broken twice. Will it be able to roast a turkey? What do you think? Much of my time between now and then has been spent on the phone to the shop, supplier, electrician etc begging for a box full of turkey-roasting heat by Christmas Day. The rest of the time has been spent mopping the brow of Hubby who arrived home last night with man-flu.

Non-Stick Flapjacks
Fortunately, the slow cooker had just delivered the latest of my home made soups so we can still eat. The flapjacks I had planned to put in the oven fared less well. The hob still worked and I was very enthusiastic in my attempts to 'bake' on it but we ended up with a kind of clumpy granola and the pan lost some of its non-stick. Still, broken granola-flapjacks and non-stick flakes made a fine supper (Hubby refused soup and insisted it was kept back until Christmas Day, in case the oven isn't fixed.)

I can see my parents' faces now when, the first time we host Christmas, they are presented with a delicious bowl of festive chicken and vegetable soup. Gawd bless us - every one!

The Pen is Mightier Than the Oven

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From Post Office to Publisher

Waiting for the First Reply

Well, it's been a couple of days since I handed over my words to the chap at the post office. The agent will definitely have received them by now. I wonder if the envelope has been opened yet...intriguing...

Wonder who will read it first? I have read all the usual horror stories about manuscripts being returned unread. I believe that, actually: I worked as a casting agent for a minute or two in the nineties and actors' letters were constantly being thrown away unread. I hope someone does read it though: I took the postage out of the food budget. My in-laws are coming over for roast chicken and I've stuck their chicken dinner to an envelope - monetarily speaking. I hope they will forgive me if I bung something cheap into the slow cooker and light some festive candles.

Writing in the Freezer

I'm quite excited to receive my first rejection letter actually. I hope it will have loads of handy suggestions in it. I'm leaving my manuscript with this first agent exclusively until next year when I'll start sending it out to all the suitable agents I can find. My printer is almost out of ink though so I'm hoping for some cash from rels at Crimble so I can buy ink and stamps. We can afford to keep the house heated until mid-January so it would be great to get some good news by then: I don't mind taking money out of the food budget for stamps but after a brush with hypothermia last month I'm too much of a wimp to steal from the heating budget too. I'm just going to have to get really good really quick: it's the only affordable option!

Jilly's Jolly

Wouldn't it be great if there were no rejection letters at all? I can hardly allow myself to imagine such a world. I spoke to Jilly Cooper about preparing myself for this bit of the journey: the bit where you send out millions of manuscripts and receive millions of rejections and she looked at me as if I were potty. She said that I will be published immediately and then said some really sweet things about why that may be the case... modesty forbids. She's nice like that. It would be wonderful if she were right though.

From what I gather, the important bit with an agent is that they know their stuff, love your work and you get along swimmingly so maybe rejections aren't a bad thing after all because they just help you cross people off the list and get closer to your perfect agent.

Well, I'd better hop off and tap out some words. I plan to finish the first draft of my second novel by mid-February so I need to get a wriggle on. I'll try to get 4,000 words down today. Wish me luck!

From Post Office to Publisher

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From Brain to Post Office

Writers write. Who said that? I should probably have looked that up before I started this blog shouldn't I? Clearly writers don't merely write: writers research then writers write. Never mind. The point I was planning to make was: 'writers write and now I know that.'

Bet you're thinking 'thank goodness I clicked onto this blog, it's so very insightful. Now I can face my day,' but before you go off and make some toast, let me explain why I am such a big fan of the 'writers write' thing.

The 'Writers Write' Thing


I have lost track of the number of novels I have started to write. Having read about a bit - magazines and such - I am tempted to believe that this is a common malady. In drawers and boxes around the world lie the very early stages of great works of fiction, stashed away for possible future development by hopeful hoarders. I like to think that Shakespeare's earliest (unpublished) work, 'Beryl and The Impatient Shepherd,' will be found any day now and make us all feel better. Until then, my advice to any writer would be to pull the early stages of a book out of the drawer and turn it into the later stages of a book: this is where the magic of 'writers write' will be made known to you. Starting a novel is easy but, and forgive me for allowing myself to sound like an expert on the subject having cranked out a single novel, finishing a novel is tricky. The reason? The middle bit.

The Middle Bit


It's not so much the beginning of the middle bit that did my head in. It was the absolute middle of the middle bit. You know when you're on a journey - maybe in a car or even on a boat or plane - in horribly dodgy weather and all the time until you get to the middle bit you are thinking 'it's OK, we're not far from home, we can go back if it gets REALLY bad'? Well, you know that middle point, before the bit where you think 'it's okay, we're past the half way point, we're nearly there'? That's the bit I'm talking about. There was a point in the middle of my novel when I felt completely out of control. The characters that I had so lovingly created started to turn on me. It wasn't that they jumped off the page and throttled me exactly, it's just that they became the decision makers in the novel. Suddenly I was no longer monarch and president-for-life over the world of my book. Suddenly, the characters owned it. There had been a revolution and none of them thought to tell me until the middle of the novel, when I was too far in to run away.

The Revolution


Partially sighted panic tackled me onto the floor and sat on my chest for a while until I got my breath back enough to decide to write through the fear, even if it meant I had to throw my very detailed plan out of the window and go where my characters led me, which is what I did. Gradually the clouds cleared and the homeward journey was actually a wonderful experience. My characters had been absolutely right to drag me somewhere else and were kind enough to allow me to steer them back through a few of the lanes I had planned for them to meander down on the way home.


The Post Office


So yesterday, after about a billion years of agonising over the letter I wrote to the agent, I walked to the local post office and handed across my precious work. When he asked whether it contained anything valuable and I replied 'only my life's work,' he looked disdainfully at the slender package so I was forced to add 'only the first three chapters of it.' Fortunately, as people were queuing behind me, I stopped myself from adding 'and it's not my life's work as such, I've done lots of other things' before handing over my C.V. He wished me good luck, I came home and had a cup of tea and now my future lies in the hands of someone in an office in London.



The Blog


This brings me to the blog, which I just decided to do on account of the fact that, however convinced I am in the brilliance of my own work, the statistics don't make chirpy reading. Evidently getting published takes a while, so while I wait I thought I'd share the process and we could all have a jolly good giggle at my rejection letters.


I haven't a clue how this thing works, having not done it before, but I guess there's some way in which you can leave messages of a hopeful or interesting nature and if I'm right and you can then please feel free to do so. In the mean time, I will blog back whenever there is anything to blog as I'm pretty sure the rule applies: bloggers blog.

From Brain to Post Office

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